Quite recently, the TLS (Times Literary Supplement) asked 200 people in the publishing industry - i.e. editors, critics, writers of fiction, academics - to nominate those writers
whom they considered to produce the "best writing" in our time (see TLS April 6, 2008: 3). The outcome, a list of the best British and Irish novelists today, was labelled "The New Elizabethans" and has sparked a debate between
those who are exited at the sheer amount of great writers in our period and those who fear the creation of an elite, a new canon.
In this lecture course, I would like to consider the question of how the literary canon has been formed throughout the history of English literature, and how texts have been understood in particular political, socioeconomic,
aesthetic and other contexts. We will discuss the works of William Shakespeare and their reception in the eighteenth century, the rediscovery of metaphysical poetry in the early twentieth century, women writers from the
Renaissance as well as later literary periods, and move towards the canonical status of literary adaptation and fan fiction in the twenty-first century. Students will gain an insight into literary history as well as theoretical
issues when it comes to reading and understanding literature.